I am not here praising or calling for any physical militancy. After all, and unlike the aforementioned Defenders of the West, who had no choice but to fight, today’s Christians need not take up arms in a physical manner. Rather, if today’s men were simply to reclaim their manhood and start behaving like men — and, most importantly, believe in a greater Cause than themselves — all of the insane ills plaguing Western society would dissipate like vapor.
One of the things that the Left fears, so much as to be prudent enough rarely to allude to it, lest it expose its own weakness, is that Western peoples might one day reclaim their Christian heritage — their true heritage, not the “Doormat Christianity” variety that was manufactured, nurtured, and led by subversive leftist elements, wolves in sheep’s clothing, seeking to undermine the West’s Judeo-Christian ethos.
Engaged in Constant Warfare
Consider the anti-Christian hit piece on the rosary that recently appeared in The Atlantic. Many have rightly condemned it as a pathetic smear against Catholics. Even so, the fears expressed within it, while exaggerated, do touch onto a certain truth: while the Left and all of its depraved elements have little to fear from Christians waging a physical “holy war” against them, they do have to fear the resurrection of the “church militant,” defined as “the Christian church on earth regarded as engaged in a constant warfare against its enemies, the powers of evil.”
This comes out clearly when The Atlantic complains of “social-media pages … saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (‘God wills it’) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants.”
The Left fears such images precisely because they invoke something innately appealing. For example, the eight men profiled in my new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, not only carried the rosary into war, but most of them sacrificed their lives — though they were emperors, kings, and lords who had much to live for — fighting in defense of the Faith.
These included Godfrey of Bouillon, a wealthy duke who forsook his many possessions in Europe to take the cross and fight for the cause of Christendom during the First Crusade; El Cid, who almost singlehandedly stopped and even turned the tides against the jihadist infiltration of Spain; Richard Lionheart, a king who nearly lost everything — and complained to God in Job-like fashion — in his attempt to liberate the Holy Land.